Afril I, 1898.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 677 
COFFEE PLANTING IN BRAZIL. 
(From our own CorresponcUnt.) 
Rio de Janeiro, 11th Jan. 1898. 
Since I wrote yon last the price of Brazilian coffee 
has risen a little in New York. The end of November 
No. 7 was 6| cts, per lb. at 10th December it was 
6f cts. at which figure it has remained for the rest 
of the month. The question arises can 
Coffee Plantino in Beazil, 
pay at these low prices? We must consider that 
exchange or the gold value of Brazilian 'currency is 
a strong factor in the case. Labourers’ wages (p id 
in currency), do not rise and fall with exchange ; but 
the amount in currency which the planter receives 
for his coffee is larger when exchange is low. Planters 
always calculate their coffee by the arroba~or 16 
kilos. Coffee was understood to pay at seven 
millreis per arroba, when exchange was at 24d per 
millreis or even at pat- 27d per millreis. Even with 
these low prices in New York, the price in Rio has 
seldom been below twelve millreis per arroba 
for the last twelve months. Exchange was at 8d 
for the first half of 1897, and 7§d the last half. With 
exchange now (in December) at seven pence coffee 
No. 7 is selling in Rio at twelve mill two 
hundred reis per arroba. The planter is thus re- 
ceiving in currency 80 per cent above what was 
formerly considered the paying limit, while the cost 
of production and transport has not risen 50 per cent. 
The low value of currency though, has effected very 
much the price of labour in towns and on public 
works — where alPnecessaries have to be imported and 
therefore paid in gold — but on the plantations where 
the colonist-labourer produces his own food on the 
ground allotted to him by the planter, he consumes 
the imported article only in the shape of clothes 
and luxuries. Those planters, however, who do not 
work on the colonist system, but by days labour 
have to pay double what it cost them formerly in 
currency. By days’ labourer the production of food 
stuffs — even at the enhanced price to be paid for 
imported food — cannot be made to pay. Rice comes 
from Rangoon and Siam, other cereals from the 
river Plate. Beef comes also from the latter place, and 
the United States sends lard and flour and all these 
have to be paid for in gold. 
It is long since the 
Sao Paulo Planter 
found out that the colonist system of labour was 
the cheapest. For that Stats— Sao Paulo— alone more 
than 60,000 principally Italians have been introduced 
every yen' for the last ten years: 1896 — 74,000; 
1895—104,000 in round numbers are the official figures. 
I have not time to go into the calculation which 
the figures as to price of coffee, exchange, and colonist 
labour suggest ; but it will be seen that although 
the price of coffee in consuming countries has fallen 
considerably — and small prospect of a rise while 
Brazil continues to give enormous crops — capital 
judicially invested in coffee property in Brazil is 
safe enough if in good managing hands. 
The present Government seems in earnest to try 
and stop the 
Annual Dificits 
and reduce expenditure, but it is a -long way from 
seven (7d) pence — the present rate of exchange — to 
the par of twenty-seven pence (27d) per millreis. 
Every one expects that with a rise in exchange there 
will be a rise in the price of coffee. The present low 
prices cannot continue, consumption will increase. 
Gompariny the gold price of plantation labour with 
that of other countries — Oeylon and India for example 
— in Brazil it is about four times more, but with all 
this owing to the system of cultivation or rather 
want of cultivation adopted, the production of coffee 
is not more expensive, than in other countries. 
The system formerly in use in Oeylon of 
Plantino 
is 6 feet by^6 feet, cutting down the tree and keeping 
it down to 3J or 4 feet, the two handlings, and one 
83 
knife pruning per year, costing a vast number of days’ 
labour, would never pay in Brazil. Weeding must be 
done in all countries and under any system of cultiva- 
tion. The five weediugs a year in Brazil, costs five 
times more than your monthly weedings in Ceylon. 
Then as regards the 
Gathering and Curing of the Fruit, 
there is a vast difference the Ceylon system of pick- 
ing consisted in picking only such fruit as was fresh 
and ripe, and the trees were gone over four or five 
times during one picking season, and the cherry skin 
was separated from the bean the evening of the 
day the fruit was gathered. The beautiful white parch- 
ment was dried with three days’ sun, and a pretty 
clean sample was shown after the parchment and silver 
skin were taken off. How differentin Brazil ! Trees 
are planted 12 feet by 12 feet. Thanks to superior 
soil and a suitable climate, they grow up, spreading 
their branches out, towards the light to a height of 
12 feet, each tree like a bunch of growing bamboos. 
Immediately before the gathering season commences, 
the ground is weeded clean and left in a hard swept 
surface under the trees, this prevents the over 
ripe berries which fall, from growing, but the 
season being dry all during the picking time, the 
beans have not a tendency to sprout. After part of 
the cherries are dry on the trees, another part are 
fresh and ripe, and a small proportion are still grown, 
the men, women and children of the colonist’s family, 
with long hooked sticks pull down the branches, 
and strip the secondaries of all that is on them, 
not respecting always the leaves. All goes to the 
ground on the clean surface, above referred to. The 
fruit is gathered up passed through a wire sieve, 
which removes earth, while sticks and stones are 
picked out by hand. Cart roads are plentifully made 
through the plantations, where the cherry is heaped 
— each colonist having his own heap. The mule- 
carts come round several times during the day, when 
the coffee is measured and put into sacks, and the 
quantity entered in the colonist’s pass-book. 
Curing 
is a very simple matter : most of the drying grounds, 
are of earth, but a few are of mortar, and cement, 
some are of flat bricks, but all are beside the machi- 
nery house, and stores. Large stores are not 
required if the estate is near a railway. The coffee 
lies on these drying grounds for about a month, 
being turned occasionally by the workmen’s feet, and 
put up in small heaps when there are signs of a 
shower. Only heavy rains do damage by washing 
the coffee off the drying ground — but this happens 
towards the end of the season, and on badly formed 
ground. When dry enough to pass through the huller 
without clogging, the cherry is washed by passing 
down a wooden sluice-spout, ending in a large 
trough with wire bottom. The earth and stones 
collect in the spout, and the dry coffee floats 
down, sticks are caught by hand while floating down. 
Ii is raked from the trough into baskets — the work- 
man protecting his shoulders by a gunny sack — and 
spread out on a clean drying ground, for the last 
time. A day of sunshine makes it brittle and crisp 
for entering into the hulling machine. There are 
several kinds of hullers and different sets of cleaning 
machinery, but in nearly all the arrangements are 
such that the dried cherry goes in at the hopper of 
the huller — “ Descascador ” they call it — passes 
through fans and sizers, and is received in sacks, 
and weighed, when it is ready for transport to the 
nearest railway station, en route for Rio de Janeiro 
or Santos, to be sold in the country. On very few 
estates in Brazil is there water enough to drive 
machinery, indeed in the famous Ribeirao Preto 
district there are many very fine plantations which 
have not water enough to wash the coffee in the 
manner I have described above. In these cases 
inventive genius has supplied machinery for separating 
sticks and stones, before the dried cherry passes 
through the huller or “ Descascador”. You will think 
this system of picking is very hard on the trees, but 
judging from the manner they send out young wood 
and leaves after the first shower, the damage does 
